By MIKE COURSON
Great Bend Post
Great Bend High School junior Carson Umphres has been playing baseball since about the age of five. Years of hard work are starting to pay off. After a successful sophomore season for the Panther baseball team last spring, Umphres tried out for and made the Colorado Rockies scout team. It's the next move up the ladder in a sport he loves.
"Baseball, I find it relaxing and kind of mesmerizing just because of all the individual battles in it; every pitcher versus hitter, the catcher trying to throw you out," Umphres said. "There's just so much stuff that comes together perfectly."
There are also the bonds with teammates and a special one baseball has given him with his father. Chris Umphres and Mike Minton started the Great Bend Bombers franchise several years ago to give young players like Carson more opportunities.
"I was probably one of our lower players at that time," Carson said. "I probably would have kept playing rec instead of finding a travel team to play on. It was really helpful having that in town."
A relatively young Panther baseball team advanced to state last year. Umphres led the team with a .468 batting average, 25 RBIs, nine doubles, and five triples. On the mound, he paced the team with 43 strikeouts in 57.2 innings of work. At the scout team tryout, Carson hit a ball 100 miles an hour and threw 80 miles an hour. To the delight of coaches, he also showed off his knuckleball as a secondary pitch. Umphres throws a hard knuckleball, which is different than the typical slow knuckleball pitch.
The organization invited him to play, both as an outfielder and a pitcher. Now, he and his father leave for Colorado or Wyoming after school each Friday and return home late Sunday evening or early Monday morning.
The scout team does not get to play at the likes of Coors Field, home of the real Rockies, but the team did use the Rockies' spring training facility in Arizona for games, complete with individual lockers. Several college scouts were there to watch. Carson hopes all the extra work - between 70 and 80 games so far - will pay off for himself and teammates.
"You don't really see all this pitching and all this hitting until state baseball," he said. "That's what separates the good teams from the bad teams is who can do it more consistently. Really, just seeing it more consistently helps to be better against it."